Page 3 of Locked and Loaded

A reflection shifted in a darkened window. Not her. Just the souk absorbing the disruption back into itself, already moving on, already forgetting.

He let out a slow breath and made himself move. The irritation was useful if he directed it correctly. Useless if he let it cloud things.

"Clever," he said under his breath. Then he stepped back into the flow of the souk and let it close around him. He knew what he was dealing with now. He hadn't known it going in, and that was on him. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice. Lennox Crowe wasn't running scared. She was running smart, which was a different thing entirely, and she was very good at it, which meant she'd been doing it for a long time. Whoever had trained her had been an excellent teacher.

He was going to have to stop thinking about this as a hunt. It wasn't a hunt. No, this was a chess match. A faint smile lifted his lips as he disappeared into the crowd. His ego had taken a hit, yes. But there was something else underneath it, something he hadn't expected. Something that felt like anticipation.

She was considerably more dangerous than he'd been told.

And considerably more interesting.

He was already looking forward to finding her again.

CHAPTER TWO

The alley smelled like heat, dust, old stone, and frying oil. Lennox ducked into a small alcove and pressed herself against the rough wall, holding perfectly still beneath the hanging fabric draped between the buildings. Bright lengths of dyed cloth shifted lazily in the late-afternoon breeze, casting the narrow space in stripes of red and gold shadow. Somewhere nearby, a vendor shouted in Arabic. Metal clanged. Music threaded faintly through the maze of the souk.

And beneath all of it sat the hard, familiar awareness crawling up the back of her neck. Someone had been following her. She held her breath.

Not one of the usual men. Those men moved like predators who didn’t seem to care if they were seen. They intimidated openly, watched too hard, stood too close. Maybe they thought she didn’t see them. It was hard not to, but then again maybe it was just the fact that she’d been stalked for months, so she recognized them. This man was different, and that was what unnerved her.

She brushed damp hair from her face and forced herself to breathe slowly despite her hammering pulse. She'd anticipated they would find her eventually. From the moment she started digging into her half-sister’s disappearance and asking questions of people who didn’t like it, her life had become one long countdown. But she'd thought she had more time. She needed more time. More time to do her own stalking. More time to find her sister, hopefully alive.

But this man got too close without her noticing.

If instinct hadn't kicked in, she might never have seen him at all. Just a flicker of movement, a shift in energy, that subtle feeling of being watched that months of running had carved into her nervous system. For such a tall, devastatingly attractive man, it was astonishing how easily he disappeared into a crowd. Dark hair. Broad shoulders. Calm, controlled movements. The kind of face people noticed, and yet somehow, he faded away anyway. That made him dangerous.

Lennox stayed motionless in the alcove, listening to footsteps pass in front of the mouth of the alley. Sweat slid slowly, irritatingly, down her spine. After a short time, she cautiously shifted just enough to look out.

Gone.

Her slow exhale lifted the hair near her temple, and then she moved. Not running. Never running because the second someone ran, people noticed, and attention was the one thing she couldn't afford. So, instead, she slipped through the crowd quickly but naturally, weaving between tourists and vendors, past pyramids of saffron and cumin, hanging lanterns, leather bags, baskets overflowing with oranges. The air smelled like smoke and spice and sunbaked stone, and somewhere behind her she could still feel him. Maybe not physically, maybe not even rationally, but enough to keep her pulse elevated.

She turned down a narrow alley where a teenage boy lounged beside racks of counterfeit designer clothing. Knockoff Chanel, Dior, Valentino, the quality better than half the things sold online in Europe. He straightened immediately when he saw her.

"Madame," he said with an eager grin and a quick bow. "Your order."

Lennox crouched beside the bags while keeping half her attention on the alley entrance. "You have the dresses?"

"Of course." He dug through one of the bags proudly. "Very good quality. Italian copies. Nobody knows the difference." He pulled out a cream-colored dress with fake designer tags still attached. Honestly? It wasn't terrible.

"Your rich friend will love these,” the boy assured her.

"She's not my friend."

The boy grinned wider. "Ah. Then she is a problem woman."

Lennox almost smiled despite herself. "You have the scarves too? And the shoes?"

He held up a pair of gold sandals triumphantly, and she handed him cash. His eyebrows lifted slightly at the amount. "Thank you. You are generous."

"No," Lennox said quietly, taking the bags. "I'm in a hurry."

The smile faded from his face just enough for her to know he understood. Vendors here noticed more than tourists realized.

“You didn’t see me,” Lennox said.

The boy frowned. "Be careful, madame," he urged softly.